


Know Your Letters, Misread the Words

by spacetango



Category: Dragon Age (Video Games), Dragon Age - All Media Types, Dragon Age II
Genre: And Several Sides of Booze, Bad Decisions, Don't You Swing Your Metaphor at Me, Dragon Age Character Alphabet Challenge, Drama, F/M, Fuck Justice, Hawke Has a Cunning Plan, Hawke With a Side of Angst, If You Don't Make Bad Decisions You Can't Have Any Fun, Srsly the Angst, dysfunction
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2013-07-29
Updated: 2014-07-13
Packaged: 2017-12-21 18:45:49
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 18
Words: 13,536
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/903608
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/spacetango/pseuds/spacetango
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Alphabet prompt. Has dysfunction. Follows the game, but deals mostly with off screen events.  Vague AU-ishness (maybe?) circa chapter O. Rated M for Marian.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. A is for Adrift

_-adj., adv.  
floating without control; drifting; not anchored or moored_

The ship is not a ship. The Blight has not happened. Carver is not dead. She has merely spun in place on a dare and has ended up dizzy in the grass with the world endlessly spinning.

"Calenhad," says Bethany.

"Denerim," Marian answers. They might as well be waiting out the burning midday sun in the tall grass of the Lothering fields.

"Mabari."

"Impotent."

"Marian, pay attention." Bethany's voice is gentle, a terrible contrast to the hold's constant creaks and groans. The ship is, after all, a ship. Bethany adds, "You're the one who wanted to play the history version."

She opens her eyes to look at her sister, who is busy picking at a dirt spot on her knee. Beside Bethany, their mother stares off into the close, stuffy gloom. She hasn't spoken much since they boarded; just keeps rubbing the palm of her left hand with her right thumb. It has become raw, but she doesn't seem to care. Aveline, too, is silent. All around them refugees like themselves are huddled into each other with identical distant expressions, all of them terrified, dirty, lost. The Blight has indeed happened, and there's no assurance Kirkwall will be safe. With the alchemy of her willpower she transmutes a mounting scream into a soft sigh. "Ishale," she says.

"Eamon."

_Not my brother. Not fair. Not this._ "Nevarra."

"Andraste."

"Bethany, let's take a break. I need air." She doesn't wait for her sister's reply, but stands on shaky legs and picks her way to the rickety steps that lead to the deck. No one bothers to move aside. Two weeks in their journey, and she's been the only one to climb to the deck every few hours. They're used to her restlessness by now, or maybe they simply don't care.

Outside the air is briny and warm. As sea birds shrill like lost souls overhead, she beholds Kirkwall's towering cliffs, jutting dark and forbidding straight out of the water. Enormous statues mounted into the jagged rock face cover their faces in eternal sorrow as they flank the ship's passage, their bronze oil-dark with time and weather. She momentarily feels exactly as their builders must have intended: a speck, nothing, a mere mote of flesh adrift at the mercy of fate. But no. She'd be betraying everything that brought her here if she became a slave to despair.

She imitates Carver's stance as it had been in his last moments of life, teeth gritted, shoulders squared, feet planted. What was it the dragon witch said? Something about ledges and jumping. Well, even on a steep precipice, a fight may be waiting. Standing on the deck of a ship fleeing the Blight, she turns her gaze ahead to the City of Chains. She is ready to leap.


	2. B is for Barter

_-v._   
_to trade by exchanging one commodity for another_

 

“Tell you what,” she smirks at the man. “You pretend those crates of Antivan brandy were always meant for Athenril, and I won't joke in the Gallows courtyard about some small time hood who slits his wrists for profit.”

“Sod off, you blighted Fereldan. It's not true. Besides, what's to stop me from telling them about your sister, if you do?”

“Nothing,” she tells him. “But then you'll have to learn to piss while sitting.”

His hand twitches on his battered whitethorn staff, but she is quicker. One dagger glints at his throat, the other at his groin. She exerts just enough pressure that any sudden movements will pierce flesh. “Ask yourself,” she says evenly, “what making the brandy available to the Coterie is worth to you.”

They stare at each other a moment, and he lets the staff drop. “Dog country bitch.”

“Glad to hear we have a deal.”

Later that month she makes sure certain rumor channels are abuzz with talk of blood magic among the freelance merchants at the docks. It doesn't take the templars long to follow the carefully laid trail, and she watches from a safe shadow as they ransack his hovel and take him away more dead than alive.

“Was it you, Marian?” Bethany has of course heard of it. Everyone has. Another apostate, dragged off screaming due to whispers and hearsay.

She sips at one of Corff's brews and shrugs. “They found proof he had been neck deep in blood magic.”

“I'm your back-up on every job, Marian. I was just outside. I heard what he said.”

She looks at Bethany a long time as she chooses her words, the din of the tavern fading in the concentration. “I'm not taking chances, all right? He wasn't even good enough to get in with any of the guilds, but was scavenging off whoever he could and selling to the highest bidder. You can bet that he'd have squawked to the wrong person the moment something went wrong.”

“And he won't now? Getting hauled away to the Gallows is the definition of that.”

“Beth, he's a confirmed blood mage,” she says gently. “They won't bother to question or listen. You know that.”

“Yes, I know.” Upset, Bethany looks a lot like Carver. She smooths away an invisible crease from her tunic and stands. “Maker, Marian, who made you judge and jury?”

Marian downs the rest of her drink with a grimace, grateful for the raw burn. She watches Bethany's slight form weave through tipsy dock hands and noisy Pit workers, and stifles the urge to run after her. Her cleverness, for all its recent exercise, has limits, and one of them is making Bethany understand that she refuses to lose another sibling, that whatever the price is for that safety, she'll pay.

Of course, protecting Bethany means cutting ties with Athenril. Too many thieves, not enough thickness. Their year is up regardless, and it'll take a whole lot more than an elven smuggler to keep the templars away.


	3. C is for Coin

_-n., v.  
metal money; the act of making such; to create, invent_

For starters, she's killed templars for maps and scored a Grey Warden mage in the bargain. Had she been asked to envision this situation before the Blight, she'd have cracked jokes about death wishes working wonders for the appetite. As it is, she only finds herself hungry for coin. Fifty sovereigns. She'll take more, but no less, and Maker knows she won't say no to strokes of dumb luck.

One of which is the Grey Warden, who makes up for poverty more acute than hers with a quick tongue and a knack for healing. Another is the Tevene elf, all dark leather and burnished steel, whipcord taut and ready to kill. When the jobs get tedious, and there are jobs aplenty in the search for all that necessary lucre, their bickering shortens the long day.

"I half wonder if you didn't encourage Feynriel to go to the Dalish just to see if they'd come to blows. I mean, I know you wouldn't, but—"  They're taking turns washing Wounded Coast dirt off over a dented metal tub in the small room they share with their mother. Bethany pauses from rinsing to look over her shoulder.  “Do you think they'll ever get along?”

“Only if they were both Tranquil.”

“You're horrible!”

Marian chuckles and shifts her weight from one foot to the other. “Hurry up, you. Gamlen won't be gone forever.”

Bethany finishes quickly and hands her a new washcloth. “You really should go first once in a while.”

“And miss propping the door closed with a bucket of sand in my smalls? Discomfort breeds toughness.”

“You sound like Carver, ” says Bethany with a laugh as she takes her turn by the door.

“Minus the part where I resent me for being better at itching than I am.”

“Oh, Marian.” Bethany shakes her head and regards her sister with a not entirely disapproving expression. “He'd have hated this place as much as you do.”

“We won't be here forever.”

She's as certain of this as she is of the sun rising every day. Somewhere along the way she's begun to believe in the necessity of the Deep Roads expedition, and it's become more soothing to her than prayer to the Divine.

As if to bolster her faith in their endeavor, more strokes of luck follow: the shipless Captain Isabela, whose easy laughter and ribald humor make even the worst setback seem small, and Merrill, who gives all of them who are not Fenris or Anders someone to fuss over, blood mage or no. Even Aveline, so focused on her job in the guard, has taken to stopping by Varric's at the Hanged Man on a regular basis.

If she believes they're drawn together in the stilted way of prisoners in a dark and cold cell, she doesn't voice it.  This tentative togetherness gives Marian almost as much comfort as the weight of gold in her purse, and she has a dim notion she's not certain what she'd do if it were to shatter leaving behind nothing but the coin they've earned. She avoids overthinking and keeps her eyes on the money. With each saved sovereign, the future feels increasingly real, as if she were a mage and the gold raw magic, ready to manifest the boundless desire of her boundless will.


	4. D is for Distraction

_-n.  
a person, thing or activity that prevents concentration_

 

The slope turns slippery after she begins flirting. It is accidental, insofar as following up an a smile full of intent can ever be accidental.

To be fair, Anders flirts with her first, but she never tells him an abomination lover is not on her to-do list, only baits him out as she wonders how his skilled healer's hands would feel on her skin. It is he who pulls back, not to mention the encounter again. And from there to losing the self-control to deny no one's made her weaker in the knees than Fenris is a very small step. Watching him tear through raider ranks is almost—almost—as good as sex. In the end, she feels it's only fair to also flirt with Isabela.

Still, she has standards. For starters, business and pleasure are oil and water, mage and templar, sun and moon. For another, her frustration will not mean extra profit for either the Blooming Rose or Corff. Right after squashing fleas and begging, it is the grand Fereldan pastime in Kirkwall, taking all of one's four sheets and letting them flap in the Hanged Man's rancid breeze, and she refuses to do that. So, she will not hit on her companions, she will not hire whores, and she will not turn to drink.

What she does: hunt criminals, one gang at a time. The irony doesn't escape her. That it takes good old fashioned thwarted lust to turn her into a champion of order is yet another thing she couldn't have imagined, but there the reality is, and here she is, dragging her mabari, Aveline, Varric and Merrill on one escapade after another, night after night.

“You have to leave something for the guard, Hawke.” Varric uses the tip of his boot to turn one of the dead Guardsman Pretenders over. “That, or start demanding a salary.”

“Call me a concerned citizen,” she says, her attention absorbed by the subtle clicking of tumblers inside the lock. “A good deed is my just reward.”

Aveline snorts. “Cut the bull, Hawke.”

“And done.” She smiles broadly as she opens the chest. “The lock, I mean. Bull, I'd rather not touch.”

“Very prudent,” says Merrill. “They look like they'd mind getting cut. What?”

“Andraste's ass! That's it?” Her cursing interrupts whatever explanation Varric looked like he might offer Merrill. “He used an Orzammar crafted lock for a few blighted silver and a chipped teacup?”

Merrill comes closer and peers inside the chest. “Oh, that's pretty. Is it magical? I remember one story about an enchanted pitcher. Or was it a butter knife?”

“It's not magical, Daisy.”

“The question is,” says Aveline mildly, “is it a reward and, if so, is it just.”

The back of her scalp still prickles with annoyance by the time she gets back to Gamlen's. She pretends she doesn't see Mother waking as she slips inside her bunk, where she tosses and turns until well after sunrise. It's work, admitting that Aveline's newly sharp sense of humor hit a well-deserved mark.


	5. E is for Existential

 

**E is for Existential**

-adj.  
 _of, relating to, or affirming existence; how Hawke likes her vices_

 

“Poetry at the Hanged Man?” Isabela's laughter is rich and warm. “Hawke, you need to get out more.”

She represses a scowl as she, unsuccessfully, attempts to snatch back _Lothering's Lament_. “I am out right now.”

“What is it with you Fereldans?” Book in hand, Isabela retreats up the steps toward Varric's rooms. “If it's not drink, or a plight of some kind, you're beating your chests over how you all invented woe.”

“Yes,” she says as she pursues Isabela. “The secret is out: misery keeps us breathing.”

“You'd think.“ Isabela throws herself in one of Varric's well-cushioned chairs and flips through the thin tome. “You worry me, Hawke.”

“I, too, have concerns,” says Varric, “though they're not so general as Rivaini's. Sit, please.” He pours a glass of dark amber liquid from squat clay bottle stamped with elaborate green wax and slides it across the table to her. “For instance, you've had the partnership funds since last week when that Sister paid up, but you haven't yet met with Bartrand.”

Her fingers drum on the table's polished surface. Of course her recent mood hasn't gone unnoticed. With a barely suppressed sigh, she chooses the seat across from Isabela. “I haven't spent it, if that's what you mean.”

“I figured. You're not having second thoughts?”

“Maker, no! It's just—“

“I blame the poetry,” says Isabela. “Listen: 'Dead you will lie and never memory of you will there be, nor desire into the aftertime—“

“'For you do not share in the roses of Lothering,” she quotes ahead of Isabela, “'but invisible too in the Maker's house you will go your way among the dim shapes. Having been breathed out'. ***** ” Her fingers close around the drink Varric poured her. “The Soul's Escape, page eleven of Lothering's Lament. Honestly, I blame the Qunari.”

Isabela stares at her open-mouthed and clearly uncertain whether a joke occured. Varric, meanwhile, has poured two more drinks from the same green-stamped clay bottle. “Well, that's different,” he says. “Is everything all right, Hawke?”

“Look, Bartrand will get the gold, we'll go to the Deep Roads and come out rich. Everyone wins. May I have the book back, Isabela?”

A playful gleam lights up her dark eyes as she watches Hawke over the rim of her glass. “You know, if you ever want less... Fereldan entertainment, I hear the Rose has a Bad Girl Special.”

Eyes half-closed, Varric sniffs at his drink. “I'd still like to know where the Qunari come in.”

“Me too,” says Isabela, who has still not relinquished the book.

“I don't suppose I'm getting out of here, or the book, until I tell you.”

Varric shrugs, Isabela grins. They probably planned this whole thing, and she only made it more entertaining by bringing that blighted tome with her because she didn't want to read it with Gamlen around. “Fine. Just remember, you wanted to know. So let's toast: to choice.”

“Now you're talking,” says Isabela. Varric, however, is silent and watches her speculatively as they drink.

She holds Varric's glance for a moment. “When that Qunari mage set himself on fire, he said existence is the only choice, and at the time—”

Isabela makes a face that leaves no doubt that her opinion of Qunari is not much different than her opinion of Fereldans.

“Anyway.” She wets her suddenly parched lips with the fiery drink in her hand. A tremor tries to edge into her voice as she says, “A lot of what I've been doing has been in consequence of— well, everything else. I guess I wanted to be certain that if I ever immolate myself it will be by choice. What else is there?”

“Fereldan poetry, sadly.”

“And some vintage Paragon's Choice,” adds Varric, tumbler aloft.

This moment she will not forget: Isabela's ironic smirk, Varric's deliberate sip at his drink, the flickering light casting oblique shadows into the corners of his tastefully opulent room, the Hanged Man's familiar din in the background. With a sudden smile, she relaxes into the chair's cushions. “Keep the book, Isabela,” she says. “Consider it a gift from a Fereldan friend.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> ***** Sappho, Fragment #55, Anne Carson, translator
> 
> Dead you will lie and never memory of you  
> will there be nor desire into the aftertime—for you do not  
> share in the roses  
> of Pieria, but invisible too in Hades' house  
> you will go your way among the dim shapes. Having been breathed out.


	6. F is for Flame

**F is for Flame**

_-n., v.  
ignited gas or vapor undergoing combustion; to shine, flash, burn_

 

“Why does she need so much elfroot?” Bethany scans the hastily scrawled list in her hand yet again. “He probably won't have that much in stock.” 

“She insisted on making extra,” says Marian. “Though I really should rethink having Merrill brew potions. The last time she did, I smelled like wildflowers for a week.”

“Yes, your street cred was ruined.” Bethany laughs. “Come on, you secretly like the Merrill surprise.”

“Definitely more exciting than what I get from Elegant. Here we are.”

They spend the next fifteen minutes pleasantly haggling over six weights of dried root, in fact just the amount Solivitus has available. Not that she needs to haggle, having already earned herself a discount on his wares, but Bethany loves it, and she finds the leisurely back and forth soothing. It'll be a while before she gets to do it again anyway. No Formari herbalists in the Deep Roads. A farewell haggle, before the farewell party, the way some people have a farewell fuck. No. Not that again, Marian.

She's so caught up in banishing the all too persistent thought of twisting herself around a slick-with-sweat and very naked Fenris, she almost doesn't notice they're being watched. It's Bethany's sharp intake of breath that draws her attention, and she follows the direction of her sister’s glance to one of the Gallows' shaded alcoves. In the thin shadow is a scrawny, robed figure, almost insubstantial next to the bright, gleaming bulk of templar armor beside it.

The details form quickly. Bald head, cold blue eyes, old nicks on the vambrace, pommel shiny from use: definitely not a recruit. A steel gauntlet on a robed arm. Functional cloth, nothing expensive, a hollow stare beneath the burning sun brand. She gives the templar a cursory nod, as might be expected, and concludes her business at a pace so unruffled it can't but belie her hammering heart.

“I thought he—“ Bethany finally says halfway to Gamlen's. “I thought they—“

“They made him Tranquil instead.” It takes effort to keep the worry from worming its way in her voice. The evidence she planted should have gotten that peddler killed, but instead they merely burned out his mind and his magic. Her own voice sounds faraway as she says, “Don't worry.”

“But what if he said something?”

“They'd have acted on it by now, if he had. It was nothing.”

She's still telling herself this very thing as she stares into the low flames of their camp some weeks later, even though it never was an argument convincing enough to leave Bethany behind. So then: off into the Deep Roads with her sister, Varric, and the best healer she knows, just in case. And the maps. And a pile of potions on top of the pile of potions from Merrill. And luck, of course. Never forget luck.

Across the fire, Bethany murmurs and turns in her sleep. That luck better hold out. There better be treasure once they find a way past the blocked path, and it better be plentiful. It's not insurance against the templars, but money will surely buy them time to find a better way of keeping Bethany safe. Marian grits her teeth: even if the Void spills open, she will not fail in this.


	7. G is for Guilt

-n.  
 _sweet, delicious, self-inflicted comeuppance_

 

There is a space inside her full of jagged little mouths. It's been there for days. She moves, they bite. She thinks, they bite. She breathes, they bite, and tear, and rend. The Void spilled open inside her. She's certain of that. The only respite is in the fight, the rush and roar of blood in her ears, the brief thrum of satisfaction when a dagger sinks into its mark.

“Hawke, behind you!”

She pivots in place at Varric's shout, and sees the emissary waving its clawed hands, the jaundiced glow of its detonation spell between them. Shit. Shit on a stick. She got carried away slicing through the rear ranks of hurlocks, spent all her energy in the bargain, now they're too spread out and she has no retreat.

She tries to duck and cover, but the emissary has finished casting and the force of the blast sends her flying. The world is devoid of sound. Blows to the head have been kinder. Her teeth feel soft. If she were to close her eyes, she'd see stars. Why can't she catch her breath?

As if underwater, she glimpses Varric at the end of the hallway, Bianca hoisted for another volley. Anders, pale in the hungry flare of spirit magic, scatters a line of hurlocks with searing flame. Dane, black with darkspawn gore, falls in mid mabari charge as if he slammed into an invisible wall.

There's something wrong with how long it takes him to hit the ground, with the angle of the ceiling, the height of the emissary. She's aware of tightening her grip on her daggers without being able to feel her palms. Distorted sounds reach her.

Varric: “Damn you, Hawke!”

The mouths grab and tear. Damn straight damn her.

“Don't you dare!”

Oh, Anders. Too late.

Is she in Lothering? The cool scent of mint lingers in her nostrils, clean and fresh like honey-infused tea on a long summer afternoon. Carver likes his with a drop of bitters, an affectation he picked up from a wandering bard, and Bethany always uses a splash of rosewater to turn hers into potable dessert.

Bethany— The mouths feast.

“You're awake.” Anders looks down at her, his expression unreadable. “How are you feeling?”

“Like I could put on a ruffled dress and flirt with an Orlesian.” It takes effort to enunciate properly, and even more effort to attempt standing up. They've pulled her away from the carnage and stuck a bedroll under her head. “How's Dane? Where's Varric?"

His grip on her shoulders is firm, as he gently eases her into a sitting position. “Careful. He went scouting ahead and your hound followed.”

“Shouldn't you be doing that? What with being a Grey Warden and all.”

“Ex Warden,” he says more sharply than she expected. “The darkspawn are dead, and my skills are better utilized here. Here, drink.”

She needs help handling Merrill's elfroot potion, and is glad for his warm strong fingers guiding her hands. Slowly, in the wake of several messy, stilted gulps, precision of motion returns. A vague mint aftertaste lingers. Quietly, she says, “That was stupid.”

“Yes, it was.”

“I'm sorry.”

“Are you?”

His question stings like a slap, unexpected but deserved. “I overextended, and I shouldn't have.”

“Tell you what, Hawke,” says Anders with an intensity she only heard him use when defending Karl at the Chantry. “If you want to burn on an unwarranted pyre of self-pity, I won't stop you. Just do it after we reach the surface, and _after_ you've thought about what your mother, and everyone else, will do with you gone.”

Her first impulse is to stab him. Her second impulse is to stab him. Her third, and the one she acts on, is to shut her lids tight against furious tears. The Void mouths gibber and bite without end. Except he's right, isn't he? Either be devoured, or survive. It's always been like this; it just took a Blight, templars and Bethany wracked with blight sickness—maybe even dying—to admit it.

She'll never know how she manages to summon a calm she doesn't feel, look him in the eye and say, “It won't. Happen. Again.”


	8. H is for Hawke

-n.  
 _the hottest hot thing in Hightown_

 

Less than six months after the Deep Roads, she's bought back the estate. Newly minted Hawke family crests, with their stylized raptors inlaid in flawless adamantine cinnabarite, flank the ivy-swathed front entrance of a mansion bigger than fifteen of Gamlen's shacks. It contains: painted, carved, gilded and lacquered furniture, antique knickknacks from Nevarra and Rivain, leather bound books with gilt edges stacked on fine rosewood shelves, a chandelier of superb Marcher wrought iron, fireplaces big enough to sleep in, an enviable wine and spirits cellar, red Orlesian velvet drapes made of the finest silk from Seheron, a dwarven majordomo and a dwarven savant, with enchantments at any rate. She may be a newcomer, and half Fereldan besides, but no party is worth mentioning if it doesn't include Serah Hawke.

“Serah Hawke, however did you manage to find a virgin bottle of Golden Scythe?”

“Do tell us how you slew that ogre, Serah Hawke.”

“My dear Serah Hawke, my son can't stop speaking of you. You simply must come to dinner.”

She never quite avoids a mincing tone when she relates her Hightown encounters to Varric and the rest of their band of misfits. They gather infrequently enough these days, but game night at the Hanged Man manages to turn into monthly event, with a rotating cast of players and expert cheating from Isabela.

She skips it tonight, and not for lack of interest. Fenris is there, and much as she loves watching him lose to Isabela's tricks, Bethany's letter means she has to find Anders. Alone. Which, now that she has to do it, she finds troubling. She wills herself out of her shadow and into step with him as he heads back to Darktown.

“That pep in your step says you lost roundly,” she says by way of greeting.

If he's surprised to see her, he gives no indication. “Ah, the glamorous Serah Hawke. We missed you tonight.”

“That really means you could have used my coin purse to distract Isabela.”

“Something like that,” he chuckles. “Everything all right?”

“Bethany finally wrote,” she says. Beside her, she can feel him momentarily tense. “She— she says it hasn't been pleasant. Not that I expected it to be, but I just— Sod it! I don't know why I'm telling you this.”

“Because I have an idea what she's going through and you want me to tell you it'll get better.”

Of course he'd say that. Not that her intent was hard to guess, but it is nonetheless too close to the surface, too similar to the unerring way he honed in on her soft spots in the Deep Roads. She sighs. “Yes, that.”

A long pause follows, filled by the sound of their boots scuffing against the street and the low, haunting cries of night birds. When he speaks again, his voice is barely audible. “I'm sorry, Hawke.”

“I thought you might say that.”

“Yes, but I also mean I'm sorry about the Deep Roads. What I said. I had no right to lecture you.”

It takes her several beats to understand him. The surprise is enough to stop her firing away even a single joke. “Maybe,” she concedes. “But you weren't wrong. And anyway, it helped.”

“Even so, I wanted you to know.”

She throws him a sidelong glance. In the spectral light of the early rising moon, his profile is sharper, more aquiline than she remembers. She speaks without knowing what she wants to say. “Anders—“

His shoulders stiffen, and a sudden breeze disturbs the feathers on his pauldrons. “About Bethany,” he says perhaps too quickly. “For what it's worth, I think it can get maybe a little better. But it depends on her.”

She doesn't ask what he means. As before, he's singled out the thing she least likes to name. Would admitting she's done the best she could to keep her sister safe be so wrong? There's no undoing the past's tangled threads. Bethany's reserves are finally tested away from the protection she's always had, but Bethany is strong. Bethany is, after all, a Hawke. 


	9. I is for Interest

-n.  
 _known side effect of too much Hawke exposure_

 

"So, Hawke, how does it feel to have the Viscount ask for your help with the Qunari?" Varric throws her an amused glance over the tops of his cards. One of the last hands of the night, and he's chosen this moment to start his inquiring minds routine.

"The Arishok asked for me. By name." She smirks out of the corner of her mouth. "So I'd say it's a lot like walking around with a big, shiny target on my back. About the only person not pleased was Seneschal Bran. Had I stuck around longer, his upper lip would have never unsneered."

Varric chuckles. "So you're saying you enjoy being an upstanding citizen."

"It has its perks."

"Only you would call being a buffer between the Arishok and the Viscount a perk," says Aveline.

"Impossible tasks give my life meaning."

"How boring. Will you three quit holding up the game over politics?" Isabela grabs the cards out Varric's hand and shuffles them back into the pack with a crisp snap. "Nothing good ever came out of interests disguised as principles. Who's in for another?"

"By the looks of that pile of coins in front of you," says Fenris, "you'll have better luck playing against yourself. I'm out."

"Spoilsport. It's criminal taking away our wealthiest player like that." She flashes Hawke a bright grin and a lewd wink. "Oh, come on, it's not like you won't leave when he does."

It's clear Isabela is amusing herself, but having things spelled out, especially with six pairs of eyes trained on her all at once, makes her feel like she's having a dream of standing around naked. There's no denying that Isabela's right. Of late, she's never missed a chance to walk with Fenris back to Hightown; she's been as religious about it as she's been about avoiding _tête_ -à- _têtes_ with Anders, though no one bothers to mention _that_. She shrugs, as if to shake off the blush spreading up her neck and, if the sudden heat is to be believed, to the tips of her ears. "It's late and, thanks to you, I'm broke. Besides, I think I've funded enough of your expense account at the Rose for one night."

"Prude." Isabela laughs, a sound rich and golden as her jewels. "Go on, then. Walk each other home, if that's the best you can think to do."

And why is it the best she can do? This question has been with her for months, and it nags at her all the way outside. She could chalk it up to his obvious reticence, but she knows it for the insufficient explanation it is. Underneath all his self-possession and prowess, she can sense a lonely, desperate sort of fragility, a purity too clean and true to be tainted by her hunger for him.

"That was an impressive blush, Hawke." His voice jars her out of her thoughts.

"What? Oh. Yes, well, I excel at many things." Like saying dumb things, for one. Well done, Marian.

"That, you do." There's no mistaking the edge of admiration in his voice, or the challenge, as he says, "However, I wouldn't have though you to be so diffident."

"Would you rather I mauled you in the street?" She meets his glance coolly as she issues a challenge of her own. "Because I would love to do that. If you'd prefer."

A short, awkward laugh. "Let's postpone mauling. I meant it was— sweet. Unexpected." With a shy, sideways glance he says, "Thank you, Hawke."

That look haunts her through the coming weeks. Gratitude, mingled with warmth, and a hesitant sort of openness underneath, as if he can't quite believe the thing he is looking at is as it seems. It disturbs her to consider that his perceptions may not tally up with her reality, as if by being who she is, she has already failed him. So, she dams the tide of her desire, channels its fury into the thrill of fighting by his side, its tenderness into the patience of teaching him to read, and keeps her fingers tightly crossed that when the postponed mauling comes to pass it'll be gentle, misnamed.


	10. J is for Juxtapose

-v.  
 _to place together for contrast_

 

Pffft! Of course she desires power. Of course she wishes to rise. She's not helping a prince, however bereft of his lands, out of the kindness of her tender heart. And just for being so dense as to state the so-obvious-it-hurts fact, she throws in an extra twist of the dagger as she plunges it into the demon's back.

Days later she's still satisfied. Even in the chantry, the atmosphere thick with fine Orlesian incense and elegant echoes, a faint thrum of excitement courses through her at the thought of having been the one to deliver that final, punishing strike. It's not the violence, and it's not the fight. It's as if the demon, by having voiced her ambitions, forced her desires out into the light. Killing the would-be tempter was not just a practical necessity but also symbolic: none but she will dictate the course of her life. It's one thing to be a hit at parties for killing a few darkspawn and looting a thaig, and another to be the pivot on which current evens turn. That's the next step up.  She's so caught up in her new sense of purpose, it takes her a few beats to realize she's being addressed.

“I really didn't think you'd come,” Sebastian is saying. “Let me show you where it is.”

“Of course.” The addition to Carver's memorial. Her manner is stiff. “You didn't have to do this.”

“I told you, it was the least I could do,” he says as he leads her to the grand memorial wall, its myriad of engraved plaques glinting in the radiant light of their vigil lamps like scales on a fabulous creature. “Here it is.”

The plain bronze plaque Mother had put up has been moved from its corner and closer to the Amell grouping, toward the center of the wall, affixed into the veined marble with handsome burnished bolts. It is now level with her gaze, and its small vigil flame has been given an ornate ironwork brazier. Two new lines form a flowing contrast to the bold letters of Carver's name:

 

CARVER HAWKE

_Blessed are they who stand before  
The corrupt and the wicked and do not falter._

 

“I spoke with your mother before having this done, and she said you might appreciate it better if you came upon it after the fact.” He sounds hesitant, apologetic. “I hope you like it, Hawke." 

She brushes her fingers over the curve of the C, following the name's flow, and fights the urge to dig her fingernails into the W's grooves. Carver would have liked it, she's certain, but does she? It was somehow easier to accept his death when his name was one of many languishing at the edges of the memorial wall. Seeing it spruced up in a prominent place only makes the old loss fresh again.

She takes a moment to form her words against the knot of tears in her throat. “It looks important. He'd have liked that.”

“You'll want some time,” Sebastian says smoothly. “Thank you for helping me. Be well, Hawke.”

She nods, her glance on the inscription below her brother's name. He would have liked that too, but only if he were to look on it from beyond the Veil after having died at a ripe old age surrounded by a passel of grandchildren, the trail of a life well-lived behind him. As things stand, he'd just ask the Maker why it is that Marian always gets the win.

If the demon shone a light on her ambitions, her brother’s plaque crystallized another truth: glory without a legacy is meaningless. She knows without hesitation she'll someday name her son Carver. She splays her palm onto the smooth metal and whispers, “I promise you, little brother.”

What she does not voice, for it terrifies her to acknowledge the feeling fueling this want, is that she's already decided on an elven father for Carver's namesake.


	11. K is for Keen

 

**K is for Keen**

-adj.  
 _1\. how Hawke likes her pleasures  
2\. the agony this chapter gave me_

 

If the first kiss in the darkened entry hall is a sharp stab of excitement plunging into her body and leaving it ragged with need, the second is the agonizing ordeal of a fever dream. He is water; she is parched.

They stumble up the stairs, a fumble of fingers and mouths. Under his leather, she can feel the contour of his desire, a hard, urgent shape. Her lips form an O, eager to shape themselves around it. He runs a thumb across them, and her breath on the exhale is pure heat. When their eyes meet, there is no reflection—she falls into the deep, all-encompassing green as into a welcoming abyss.

Her hands press against the taut planes of his body, his mold themselves to her curves. She traces with her tongue the bright lyrium swirls, punctuates the end of each journey with a bite and a kiss. He is a map to a new country, a new reality, and his moans of pleasure—it must be pleasure—her only guide.

She unravels under his touch, a myriad of ravenous Marians each in agony for a piece of him, only to be made whole again at the feel of him inside her.

"Hawke," he says. "Oh, Hawke."

His eyes are closed. Hers are open. She wants to remember everything. Not once does it occur to her to let the event unfold without hunting for moments to trap under memory's distorting glass. Having him under her, above her, intoxicates. It is a banquet. She feasts, and there is no purging his hold on her senses. Together they crest only to topple down, down.

"What about you and Fenris?" asks Aveline some weeks later, absorbed by her romantic woes.

She and Fenris. Her memory, bright and clear, hurts: his taste in her mouth, like the tang of air before a clap of thunder, with just a hint of slashing rain. The rickety barricade she's constructed against her churning emotions threatens to crumble. Her tongue stumbles on the words as she explains that it is, well, complicated, and an unsatisfactory example of togetherness besides. She avoids eye contact. The sudden awareness of Anders watching the exchange renders her shy.

He's not curious, she's certain. She wouldn't be surprised if he were able to explain what went wrong, even though she, the one who was there, can't figure it out. Marian grits her teeth. Getting Aveline a date will be work. Work is focus, and focus is calm. Just enough calm to face Fenris once the project is over, in fact.

"So, about us." Flush with success and a buzz as nasty as the drink that caused it, she's dropped in uninvited and chosen to cut to the chase. "That night."

He stares into the cold and empty fireplace and avoids her glance. "Hawke," he says, a little weary. "It's late."

"So you're throwing me out?" She wants him to say yes. She wants him to physically evict her. She aches for his grip.

All he does is continue staring into the empty hearth. "Of course I'm not."

"How about you tell me what happened, then?" She means it to sound harsh, but instead her voice is soft, almost cracking, and her heart a wild flutter in her chest. She reaches out to touch his cheek, only to stop as he flinches. She sounds lost: "Please, Fenris."

"There is nothing else to say."

"I see." She doesn't. All she understands in this moment is the need to scream until her throat is raw. She somehow manages to add, "I knew I wasn't drunk enough for this."

"Maybe you should sleep it off."

"I don't want to sleep it off! I want to understand." And, as if the phrase were magic: "I love you."

The silence is a roar all around them. Even her heart gives up its frantic beating for one awful moment.

"I'm sorry, Hawke," he says as if he's noting the room needs cleaning. "Maybe I will ask you to go."

"Fenris—" But the words refuse to happen. There's a knot in her throat, and she is—stupid Marian—rooted to the spot.

"Goodnight, Hawke."

Her chest tight, she nods. The same self-control that saw her through the Deep Roads kicks in, instinct by now, and she stumbles outside. The tightness grows, it spreads unchecked with each step, a vicious black stain, seepage from a poisoned wound.


	12. L is for Limit

_-n._   
_a means of proving things, creatures, and concepts finite_

 

"Of course—" It's all she manages to get around a mouthful of too warm spiced stew, before having to wipe sauce off her chin. She nurses the petty hope Fenris will sneer at her dining habits, but his attention is riveted on impaling bits of carrot with his knife. They've kept their contact casual in the couple of months since her drunken assault on his privacy, and she's managed to reach the point where she can think of the incident in the abstract. For the most part. Marian exchanges a glance with Varric, then turns to sopping up stew juices with a piece of flatbread.

“Nothing like applied politics to whet the appetite.” Varric punctuates with an eloquent shrug. He's ordered an enormous pot of the Hanged Man special to ease the bad news of their encounter, and he means to play host. “What Hawke wants to say is that Petrice got away again. The Chantry still has a Mother, but the Coterie lost a mastermind.”

“At least there's a silver lining,” she mutters. “With Varnell dead, she's lost her arm within the Templars and will be forced to work with run-of-the-mill fanatics.”

“They'll still be dangerous,” says Aveline. “Petrice nearly succeeded in causing yet another incident with the Qunari. She won't stop until there's full out war.”

“Yet even with knowing that, you do nothing.” Anders wears the same hooded expression he's had since the fight with Varnell. He pokes at his still untouched bowl, but his glance on Aveline is pure confrontation.

“Varnell is dead, and there is nothing to tie his actions to Petrice,” says Aveline evenly. “I can do nothing until I have something concrete. In any case, it's best I was going. There's a report still to file. Thank you for dinner, Varric.”

“Good call, Big Girl."  Isabela affects a stage whisper in the wake of Aveline's departure.  "He's brought up the injustice of the system, which means the plight of the mages is next. My digestion can't take it. Come on, Kitten, let's go and I'll teach you how to stack a deck.”

“When did you get a ship? Wait, where do you walk if you don't have a deck?”

With Isabela and Merrill gone, the room feels smaller, confined. Marian exchanges a glance with Varric, then dedicates her attention to sopping up the last of the stew juices with a piece of flatbread. She thought it'd be difficult being around Fenris, but if she's honest, it's not the proximity to him that rankles.

“Petrice probably thinks the chaos is the surest way to rouse support for her cause,” says Anders as if no interruption occurred. There is no mistaking the bitterness in his voice as he adds, “And she's probably right.”

"Hmh.  First she's corrupt, now she's right. You mages always use whatever specious reasoning suits you.”

“Oh, yes,” she says ahead of Anders' retort. “When they're not plotting wholesale subjugation, they spend their free time practicing maniacal laughter.”

Varric looks like he's itching to take notes, Anders' belligerent expression has been replaced with badly concealed satisfaction, and Fenris is— Fenris is exactly who he's always been. The realization stings for being one she chose to ignore. She's the one who decided his beliefs didn't matter, that she would love him into changing, that they'd scrape a relationship together out of wishful thinking and a whole lot of lust.

“Look,” she says, undaunted by the bald truth. “Today, someone capable of no magic whatsoever almost started a war with the Qunari, which is more than I can say for any mage I've known. I'm not going excuse my sarcasm, because I've always felt this way. My father was a mage. My sister is a mage. I could have been a mage. It's chance, Fenris, not choice. The magisters choose to use their magic for ill, and it's easier to blame their actions on chance than to admit they don't have that many other choices they _can_ make.”

“You're wasting your breath, Hawke.  People like him—"

“No.” She whirls from one to the other. “You don't get to use my words against him! Just because you know better than any of us what it's like to be hated and feared for something outside your control doesn't mean you get to be the victim. Chance kicked you hard and you're still crawling about on the ground, moaning about how bad it hurts. Enough. Yield, hide or fight back.”

“Well.” Varric's eyebrows have nearly disappeared into his hairline. “Rivaini will regret not staying for desert. A drink, Hawke?”

“Thanks, I'm good. But we'll no longer be if any of this makes it into one of your stories.”

She doesn't bother with goodbyes. She figures she's made a big enough ass of herself that bad manners won't matter. The worst of it is, she can't rant and jab a finger at herself the same way she just did to her friends.

Yes, Fenris is her friend. If he'll forgive her. So's Anders, though that feeling is distorted, like glimpsing odd reflections in rippling water, and she's not certain she wants to know what image hides within the waves. She tries, as best she can, to clear her mind. For the first time since arriving in Kirkwall, she hopes to encounter no conflict on her way home, no fight.


	13. M is for Mirror

_-n._   
_potentially unsettling object_

 

She shakes out the length of crimson fabric until it falls from her shoulder and pools on the floor. Black hair, pale skin, stark against all that bloody red. It's the effect she wanted, so she straightens her spine, lowers her head, and tosses a half-lidded glance at her reflection. The charitable might allow that it's a smolder.

“Oh, stop glowering, Hawke. It just needs baubles.” Isabela cracks a sugared almond between her teeth and waves her empty goblet about. “Drink for me, jewels for my friend here. Make one strong, the other shiny.”

The elven attendant seems relieved to disappear behind one of the brocaded drapes of Madame Delphine's shop. There's a muffled conversation somewhere within, some hurried rustling. Leandra Amell's cachet and Marian Hawke's money guarantee Isabela's demands will be exactingly met.

“Play nice, Is. You're the first pirate they've seen.”

“Says the woman who goes frippery shopping armed to the teeth. What's with the spree anyway? Given that you just killed Merrill's plans for that mirror, I'm surprised you're not drowning your guilt in Corff's worst.”

“I don't feel guilty preventing bad decisions. And the spree is for you.”

Isabela's laughter is ever like tinkling coins. “If you're asking me for a date, try buying me a drink.”

“You'll want more than a date when you hear this.” She throws herself in a shell-pink armchair and holds up two fingers. “Two words: Amando Pergami.”

“Pergami. That's the family that runs most of Antiva's banks.”

“The same. My sources say he also has ties to the Armada. One name, in particular, came up.”

“Castillon.” Isabela's mirth has dissipated. “Tell me it is.”

“Thing is, my sources are certain Pergami has it in for Castillon. Something about conflicting expansion interests. So, if during one of the exclusive engagements he's due to attend while in Kirkwall, he should run across someone with similar goals regarding Castillon, and if that someone is sizzling hot in the bargain—”

“Then he might be persuaded to provide information.”

“Or resources.”

“Hawke, I could kiss you. Anywhere you'd like.”

Marian grins just as Madame Delphine sweeps into the room. She carries an inlay box certain to contain the requested jewelry, and she is flanked by two of the shop's assistants, one bearing candied fruit and liquor, the other loaded down with laces, ribbons, feathers and garments in various species of blue, gold, magenta, alizarin. “Ladies,” she says in a soothing contralto, “I suggest we start with the blue.”

An iridescent azure hammered silk, in fact, which looks magnificent on Isabela, so at least there's that, even if their caper failed. Through no fault of their own, she might add. There's also the consolation buzz, encouraged to bloom into resplendent drunkenness by the bottle of vintage Antivan brandy they're passing back and forth in front of the study fireplace. At five in the morning, thank you so much. Last but not least, there's an eyeball gleaming on Isabela's finger. Scratch that. A large pearl and emerald ring.

“Maker's sauce, Isabela! You didn't steal from—”

“Pergami's boyfriend? Oh, but I did.” Isabela helps herself to a swig, then fishes around in her cleavage. “But don't worry, chicklet, I got you something too.”

“Is this—?” She squints through the booze, but her best guess involves gold plating and mummified monkey paws.

“Your wish come true: Lady Someone's cherished scratcher. You're welcome.”

Marian barks a laugh. “I should always bring pirates to Hightown parties.”

“Except the only pirate you know finds Hightown dull, party favors aside.”

“You're just sore it didn't work out.” They drink in companionable silence, though the mood seems to have shifted. “I'm sorry, Is. I really thought this might have given you an advantage over Castillon, so you could stop looking for that void-blasted relic.”

“You worry too much. We got free booze and party favors, and if I ever want to play a game of Empress Celene and loyal subject, I now have the threads.” Isabela passes back the bottle and stretches out in front of the hearth. “The problem is, you want to fix even the unfixable things. I'm not judging, it's your thing, the fixing and the solving and the stabbing of things that refuse to be solved or fixed. But you know, sooner or later, you'll manage to fix something that should remain broken.”

Even through the heady stupor induced by the brandy, Isabela's words have a familiar ring. She should admit she's had similar thoughts, but finds it difficult to phrase a proper sentence. For no reason at all, she thinks of the time she dared Carver to chant the Black Divine's name alone, at night, in front of a mirror. Which he did, in spite of being all of six and terrified enough to pee his pants. Not one of her finest moments, so it seems fair somehow that she's inarticulate now that she's faced with a simple, obvious truth.


	14. N is for Numbers

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> In which stuff happens, animal violence occurs, then more stuff happens. Be warned.

_-n.  
theoretical constructs used to maintain the illusion that reality is ordered_

 

Hawke has worked out her to-do list.

One: distract the pirate with the aid of a bajillion drinks, so she's too hungover to wake up before sunset. She loves Isabela to bits, but the palling with her Mom has to go. Since Isabela just missed Marian—the third time this week, what a surprise—won't she come in and wait? Won't she call her Leandra? While she waits, would she like some cookies and a chat? Void, no! What's next, Leandra Amell Hawke at Wicked Grace night?

Two: apologize to Merrill even though Isabela claims it's an idea so bad it makes ordinary bad ideas look stupelliant and brillendous. As if. Since when is Isabela a beacon of wisdom? Apology it is: all out abject contriteness, sorry-I-fucked-up-your-life-goals-but-it-was-for-your-own-good-regret. That doesn't go over well. Nuthin' for Hawke, one for Isabela, and maybe two for Merrill.

Three: don't get dead in a Lowtown alley after getting thrown out of Merrill's. By Merrill. In the middle of the sodding night. After distracting the pirate with a good fraction of those bajillion drinks and a bonus bar fight with the local color. Who knew Dog Lords held grudges.

She dodges a blow from a mallet big enough to pulverize boulders only to end up flanked by mabari. She kicks one in the snout, spins to slash at the other's throat, sees the third charging her down just late enough to brace against the impact. As expected, the mabari hurts. They only look cuddly.

The world is topsy-turvy. There's a popping sound in her shoulder, followed by a sharp trill of pain. She regains her breath to the hound's maw tearing at her right forearm, its body pinning her down. Good. It's going for disarm, but it only has one mouth to her two daggers. She grits her teeth, rides the head rush of twisting on her dislocated shoulder to deliver a quick stab-and-twist to the hound's left kidney. The mabari half-yelps, then goes rigid.

She hears herself cry out as she scrambles out from under its body. Two hounds down, one recovering from its stun, five archers, and that void blasted mallet. Two arrows, too, sticking out of her left thigh. When did that happen?

Still on the ground, she scuttles backwards into a shadow, her fingers working to extract a miasmic flask from its pouch. Arrows break against stone, sink into the dying mabari. As she tears the flask's wax casing with her teeth, her glance meets the fallen hound's, and she fights the urge to cradle its big, square head.

The flask shatters at the archers' feet, giving her just enough time to stagger back up. Please, please let mallet be within its radius. With the last of her reserves, she fades into the surrounding darkness. The sewers. She's bleeding, she has to confuse the trail. Isabela still one, Merrill certainly two, Hawke a hundred, meaning Hawke wins. If she gets away, that is.

Four: make it to Darktown and Anders before passing out in Kirkwall's muck, which is the same thing as dying. Must avoid that, irony aside. In spite of the pain—no, because of it—she can't repress nostalgia for the days of traipsing about down here, Bethany in tow.

By the time she makes it to the door of his clinic, shaking and chills have set in. Her right arm is useless, her left leg not much better. She has to make an effort to keep her teeth from chattering as she calls out his name. Her pounding on the door sounds like it's going on forever, somewhere far away.

All of a sudden the door isn't there. Just Anders in the doorway, outlined by a flickering glow: hair disheveled, no robe, shirt and trousers rumpled. “What the— Maker!” Annoyance becomes surprise, worry. “Hawke!”

She all but collapses against him, and she can feel his stubble catching at her hair. He smells like ink, dried elfroot, and perspiration. “Hawke wins again,” she mumbles to his shoulder.

Five: pretend she's never read any of Isabela's friend fiction about this moment. Or one like it, at any rate.

He's gotten her onto a table, reset her shoulder, removed the arrows, gave her clean clothes, and is now channeling healing magic to her wounds. Her entire body tingles. She can feel her skin prickling, her nipples hardening against the coarse linen of the borrowed shirt. And because Hawke is Hawke, she sighs and arches her back into the delirious warmth of his palms. “Mmm, Anders—”

Is that a waver in the flow of magic? “You must be feeling better.”

“Thank you.”

“Anytime. Just not any time soon. Will you be all right getting home?”

“Yes, I think so.” His glance on her as she gathers her things is pure friend fiction. Curse Isabela. She talks on to distract herself from acknowledging what she started. Consequence is a dirty word. “I owe you at least one, though more like a whole lot. Sorry about all this. Really. And I'm sorry about laying into you at the Hanged Man.”

“No, you were right. I was doing a lot of complaining. Listen, have you ever heard of Ser Alrik?”

Six: help Anders. She owes him one, or several. Besides, what are—and she hopes he doesn't notice her stumbling on the word—friends for?


	15. O is for Optimism

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> A longer chapter. There is a cunning plan involved.

_-n._  
_the best way to get a fine mess started_

 

“So, you and Blondie, huh?” Varric's amusement is edged with curiosity and sits uncomfortably atop—what is that, concern? He's even keeping it low key and private: no card games, no Isabela. “Interesting choice, Hawke.”

“You mean you want details.”

“Only what you're willing to share.”

Her laughter, sudden and dagger-sharp, cuts through the din from downstairs. “Andraste's flaming lips, Varric, are we going to have a sleepover now?” She throws herself in one of his well-cushioned chairs, dangling a leg over its carved arm. She leans back, keeping her face in just enough chiaroscuro to hide her expression. “No, no, I get it. He's not what I would have expected of myself either. I do expect some Paragon's Choice from you, though.”

Varric, of course, takes the bait. A toast, then: “Don't take this the wrong way, Hawke, but I wonder if you'd have a live-in apostate boyfriend had that Ser Alrik business gone any different.”

“Still convinced I want to fix everything, eh?” She holds up her hand, ahead of his reply. “It could have been worse. Justice could have killed Ella. Still, you're missing the mark, V.” She sees no reason to say that it's the best way to keep an eye on Anders; the truth would ruin her story. “Actually, it was the cats. No, really. Anders was putting out milk one of the times I dropped by for a visit.”

Which he had been. That much was true. The rest of it—not at all like the romantic version she gives Varric.

 

#

 

The truth is, she set up her moment. She'd been watching the clinic every night since the mess in the Gallows tunnels, and she saw the Templars prowling about not long after. Since turning him in wasn't an option, keeping him close had to suffice. She spent a lot of time hanging around Lirene's, pretending to shop until she found the help she needed, then set up the pieces. Sooner or later, they'd come around again, and when they did, her move would be ready.

The one thing she never could shake off the entire time she was planning was the image of his spirit-fueled fury giving way to fear, desperation, guilt. Anders riven by lyrium-blue cracks, his voice resonating with a spirit's madness. Anders, his breath ragged, eyes red with the sting of suppressed tears, piling shabby odds and ends into a beat-up satchel. She talked him into staying, if not out of his self-loathing and anger.

This made him her responsibility now, didn't it?

Whatever he may have meant to accomplish by letting that spirit share his body went sideways six ways from Orlais, and it didn't seem farfetched to suppose it could blow up in all their faces. He seemed just vulnerable enough now to topple with the right push, and if he did, then maybe she'd find a way to take care of that Justice problem. Easier to stab the demon you know than the demon you don't.

The situation, she noted, didn't feel real until Dane showed up with the agreed upon signal, a blue ribbon tied to his collar. She ran a finger over it, aware that she'd chosen it because it was lyrium colored. _Justice-hued._ Part of her wanted to run, let the plan fall by the wayside, but part of her—

Leaping off metaphorical cliffs was her specialty. Optimism put a spring in her step as she slid out of her shadow and walked through his door. Reflecting on things later, she'd recognize that moment as the beginning of the end of her resistance to him.

“If I didn't know better,” she said, watching his slender, long fingered hand on the saucer, “that time I dropped in here looking like a soiled pincushion, I could have sworn you had company.” She could barely get through customary pleasantries, and now that the game was on, she found herself jittery, unfocused. She should have planned what to say.

“Who'd be here that late, Hawke?”

A smirk, straight from the Isabela playbook. Bless Isabela. “You tell me. Especially if it's naughty.”

“Don't be daft.” But he reddened, stalked away from the saucer, put a whole table between them. Bullseye. His discomfort was the balm her confidence needed.

“You wanna know what I think?”

“Not really.”

“I think you did have company.” She leaned across the table and, her smirk still in place, made a rude gesture. “In a manner of speaking.”

“Really, Hawke.”

“Don't be a prude. We all keep ourselves company sooner or later.” She came around the table, and let him back himself against the wall. Part of her still wanted to run, but the rest of her— “I guess what I'm saying is, I'd rather make friends with your cock than my fingers.” She left less than a fingerwidth of space between them. Their breaths intermingled for one interminable moment. “I'm right here, Anders, and I want you to want me. What are you afraid of?”

He gave a strangled half-groan, and closed his eyes. He swallowed. “Maker, Hawke!”

“Fuck the Maker. You're not afraid of the Maker.”

“Justice—”

“Fuck Justice too.” He hadn't told her to back off yet, so she took it as a sign she should start undoing the clasps of his coat. She pressed herself into him, nipped at his jaw. “Better yet, fuck me.”

It stunned her, the force of his kiss. Like something inside him snapped, unleashing impossible pent-up momentum. The scratch of his stubble felt like a warning. His tongue, hot inside her mouth, alternated between exploration and invasion, and when they broke apart, panting, her lips felt bruised.

“If that's what you want,” he said thickly. “I won't hold back anymore, but I warn you—”

“Fuck your warning,” she rasped in his ear.

He kissed her again, before she even finished speaking, gentler this time, like she was made of dreams, of air. His left hand skimmed the curve of her ass, his right sank in her hair, pulling her head back to expose her neck to his eager mouth. Then—

A pounding, as fast as her heart. “Messere, open up, please." Fereldan accent, young, panicked. Perfect timing. "Please, Messere.”

He tore himself from her, fumbling with the buckles she'd managed to undo.

“Expecting anyone?” Voice not as steady as she'd have liked. Good for the situation, bad for her morale. Too late now; the cards were on the table, and she'd already gambled that he'd be too rattled to think straight.

He shook his head. Those ridiculous clasps kept evading his fingers.

“Anders, here.” She placed her hand on top of his, startled to feel his heart hammering in his chest. Ignoring the inner voice screaming at her that she was a terrible fucking person for using his fears, she said, “I got your back. It's ok.”

“Messere, please.” The knocking resumed. “Please, open.”

She melted into a nearby shadow while Anders opened the door. The kid looked even younger in the dim Darktown light than he had at Lirene's. “Thank the Maker,” he said, out of breath, tumbling inside the clinic. “I ran all the way here when I heard them, Messere. You've got to get out.”

“Slow down, lad.” Anders' voice shook. “Heard who?”

The boy pitched his tone to a whisper. “Templars, Messere. Something about asking the Darktown healer questions, but that's not never gone right with them lot. 'Specially not at this hour.” He gasped as she stepped out of her shadow. Eyes wide, mostly fear, the right touch of surprise—she got lucky finding talent like that. “Oh, beg pardon, Serah.”

She caught Anders' eye. He blanched, but that was all. So far, so good. “Where were the Templars?” she asked the boy.

He paused, uncertain, glance darting back and forth between them. He didn't speak up until Anders nodded, and she knew then she'd find the kid a way out of Kirkwall. Back to Ferelden, if he wanted. “By the eastern exit at the docks. Please, Messere, don't let them find you!”

“They won't,” she said, when Anders remained silent. “Better make yourself scarce, lad. Here, for your trouble.”

The boy eyed the silver, then pushed out his chest, all defiance. “I didn't run here for money. 'Sides Lirene, he's the only one as cares what happens to us.” True. It's how she managed to get young Colm to do as she asked, and keep quiet in the bargain. That, and a few select exaggerations.

She fought the urge to cross her fingers, and said, “Suit yourself. Be careful getting out of Darktown.” Then, all business: “Anders, come on. We have to go.”

He shot her a raw look, but he grabbed his staff and let her hustle him out. She stuck to the back passages and tunnels, Dane in tow. Just because she'd told Colm to embroider didn't mean the threat wasn't real. Templars were still on their way to Darktown. Best to avoid them.

Anders didn't break his grim silence until they were inside her front hall.

“Hawke, what am I doing here?”

“Surviving. Come on.” She led him up the stairs, to her room. It was work, unclasping his fingers from his staff, laying it aside, getting him to sit down. “Anders, you're safe.”

“Am I? Because right now it feels like I'm just sidestepping the hole at my feet only to fall down the chasm at my back.” He swept an unfocused glance all around. “This doesn't even look real.”

“Anders—”

“I'm sorry. I panicked. They've been around a few times already.”

Oh, she'd seen them. “I had no idea. Are you—”

“Don't worry about it.”

“Hey.” She pressed her palm to his cheek. “I won't let them touch you.” The words were bitter with the echo of having failed Bethany, and she realized she meant what she said. “Come here.”

The unexpected thing was, they just held each other, fell asleep clothed, curled into one another like kittens, straight until dawn. With morning's clear light streaming through the tall windows, she tucked a stray blond strand behind his ear, and simply said, “Stay.”

 

#

 

“And then, I guess I offered him a sandwich.”

“Hawke, you are a true romantic. Generations of poets shall sing of you.” This is the most she's seen Varric laugh. He doesn't even seem to have objections to how thick she laid it on with that love in the Circle business, but then, what would either of them know about that. The blind leading the blind. “Seriously, though. You look—happy.”

She pulls at the last of her drink, considering. She's not unhappy, and she likes having Anders around. Beyond that—another cliff, another leap she has yet to make.


	16. P is for Promise

_-n._   
_a surefire way to eventually encounter interesting consequences_

 

Now that she's trampled all over the promise she made to herself to keep her distance from Anders, she has trouble deciding if she's surprised she broke it, or that it took her this long. She's always been just as capable of leaping off cliffs as avoiding them, but in those instances she could tell the cliff, however metaphorical, was, however metaphorically, still a cliff. Anders, now—she doesn't know what Anders is. She pokes at the toast on her plate, reaches for the clotted cream, remembers she doesn't like clotted cream, puts it back again.

“Everything all right, darling?” Leandra's spoon is poised above the fluted rim of her cup. “You've barely touched the food.”

“I'm not hungry.”

“You've been scowling all morning.”

“And you think smiling more is going to help?” Maker, now she's channeling the fourteen year-old she hasn't been in fifteen years. “I'm sorry, Mother.” She offers up a tight smile. “It's been a long week.”

“More of that Qunari business?”

And the Carta trying to kill her besides, which could be fun, in different circumstances.  She digs into the toast. Can't tell lies with a full mouth. Bless Kirkwall for being a bigger mess than her decision making process.

“Because, it seems to me,” continues Leandra between delicate sips of tea, “you've been rather on edge these few weeks since you took up with Anders.”

“I didn't _take up._ ”

“Do you love him?”

“Mother!”

“Marian, it's fine if you don't, but if that's the case, you shouldn't let him believe that you do.”

“I don't. I mean, I don't let him believe anything. He believes whatever he wants. Maker's breath, Mother, why am I even discussing this with you?”

“You're not. I'm asking questions, you're getting flustered.” Leandra smiles. “No one can call that a discussion.”

For not being fourteen anymore, she nonetheless has the urge to stomp away and slam doors. “Fine,” she says with a deliberate sigh. “Why do you always ambush me like this?”

“Because it's the only thing that works.” Leandra pushes her tea aside, and begins buttering a scone. “You've never let your guard down, not even when you were young. All that moving around, always having to mind what you say about your Papa, no friends, no place you could call home. Your father always blamed himself.”

Her mother has never spoken of life before Lothering, and to hear it brought up over breakfast is like something out of Varric's stories.  Same level of carnage, less blood.  “Mom—”

Leandra shakes her head.  “But the truth is, the damage those years inflicted on you is my doing.” She places the scone on Marian's plate, and tops it with a spoonful of raspberries. “I was the one who wouldn't leave Malcolm, no matter what. After one particularly close call, he suggested I return to Kirkwall with you. Your grandparents, he said, would be glad to have their daughter back, and they'd love you. He said he'd been selfish having me run away with him.” Leandra's hand closes around the locket at her throat, her expression a mix of wistfulness and defiance. “We'd promised to be together, and he was rescinding his part of it. I was furious—the worst fight we ever had. It wasn't until it was over that I realized you'd been awake who knows how long, watching.”

Hawke frowns at her plate, unable to dislodge anything resembling Leandra's story from memory's depths.  What few things she does remember of that time are hazy, a disjointed stream of drab places, punctuated by the black of her father's beard, the blue of her mother's eyes. “I don't remember any of it,” she says, wary. Her mother wouldn't bring it up without purpose.

“You were young, not yet three. Do at least have some berries. I got them for you.” On noticing her reserve, Leandra laughs. “Honestly, Marian, they're not poisoned.”

“This time,” she mutters, but she pops a few in her mouth, and lets herself savor their delicate, perfumed sweetness. Better than admitting she might understand her mother's point.

“See? Delicious. You don't mind if I bring Gamlen some when I see him this evening, do you?” Leandra stands, and comes around the table to stroke the top of Marian's cheek. “What I was trying to say is, I want you to be happy, and you'll never be happy if you pretend to play at love. There's too much of me in you.” She places a light kiss on top of her daughter's forehead. “Enjoy your day, darling.”

She wants to rally a witty rejoinder, but finds it more comforting to mumble, “You too.” At least it's honest. She crushes a berry to the roof of her mouth with her tongue, keenly aware that she'd never have allowed herself to confront her feelings for Anders without the comfortable smokescreen of untruths.


	17. Q is for Quo

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Hawke figures some of her shit out with the aid of metaphor. Bless.

_-Quo vadis?_

 

Her dream horizon is jagged and red, a badly sewn crack with mismatched edges. See the sky meet the sea? There. Red and wrong are one. You can touch those corpse-cold edges, but when you do—

_Marian, wake up._

—when those lifeless raised edges meet your fingertips, you have to choke the screaming back.

She fights through the reek of rot and lye to pull at the horizon's edge. It unravels, it falls. The sea melts into the sky, the sky cracks into shards, whirling black behind them. All is Void, or should be, but for the jagged red trail winding its way into the dark.

_Marian. Can you hear me, love?_

It's a circle. Round and round, dark red line all around. Red like velvet from Seheron, red like wounds offering up their gift of blood, like—

_Hawke!_

She scrambles back. Milky predawn light, a firm, warm touch on her shoulder—the only dangers. Her vision takes time to focus. The tent is chill with mountain air, and somewhere in the distance, she thinks she hears the call of raptors.

“Another nightmare.” Exhaustion contours the softness of his voice. “You were thrashing around.”

“He— My—” Words sounded with a parched throat. “Her neck—” Hands clenching, nails digging hard into palms. A tightness in her chest she hasn't felt since the Deep Roads. She flinches when Anders touches her arm.

“Here,” he says, holding out the water flask.

Her hands shake so bad, more water makes it down her chin than in her mouth. She counts backwards from ten, then again from twenty, again from thirty, forty, fifty, the way he talked her through when the nightmares started.

“It was a bad idea, having Bethany along,” she says after a time. “I can't talk to her.”

“Of course you can.”

Another pull of water. Gamlen wrote Bethany; her letter, unsent, amounted to four words: _Sister, Mother is dead_. Her ability to phrase things disappeared the moment she saw— _No_. Not _that_. She screws her eyelids tight. “How do you know?”

“Because you're Hawke. You're going to focus, you're going to strap on your daggers, and you're going to get the Carta off your back, even if it means you'll have to bring down the Vimmarks to do so. You're also going to look your sister in the eye, and—”

“What, show her how a real winner holds it together?”

He shakes his head, brushes back her wayward bangs. “No, love. Let her see how broken you are.”

“Anders,” she says, groping inwardly for something neutral to say.

“You're not alone, love.”

She picks at the strap on the water flask. All she wants to do is scream at him for being calm, for being kind, for holding her together; that last one is worth an extra stab or two. Her final conversation with Leandra replays itself unbidden in her head. Safety of lies then, safety of anger now. It seems to her that she's forgotten how to break this stalemate. “No, I'm not alone,” she says at last, but tightness grips her chest, hateful and coiled.

It spreads with every quip and stab, making it easy to keep her distance from Bethany. Not even her father's echoes, trapped inside the fortress by magic neither of them understand, loosen the brittle bravado she's chosen as her armor.

It is a numb descent toward Corypheus, until—

“Anders!”  It's Bethany who calls out.

He staggers, falls. The voice tugging at him since they entered has finally pulled the leash taut.

Her daggers are out even before Justice takes over. Reflex, she blames reflex, because the sight of Anders subsumed by that Fade thing, to keep him from succumbing to who knows what horror, turns her spine to ice.  Without him, the world might as well be a long, bleak nightmare.  The tightness transforms into chill sweat, thundering heartbeat, teeth gritted so tight, her ears ring.

The signs are clear. She's already in mid leap.

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I've always hated how blase Hawke is about stabbing her boyfriend in the face when Justice possesses him to prevent his being taken over by Corypheus. (Not that it makes sense to get stabby with the possessed, but it is DA2 we're talking about here. It didn't even have enough of a budget for a proper title. Anyway.) 
> 
> I mean, it's Varric, who's all, "Man, Blondie, don't do that shit . I don't want to shoot you full of bolts, and neither does Bianca. Peace." Meanwhile Hawke stoically walks away. WTF, Hawke?
> 
> So, I'm headcanoning severe PTSD in the wake of Leandra's death. Eventually, because she's Hawke, and because she's finally figured out some of her feels, she'll pull herself together enough for some sexual healing, because Anders is The Sex. No, really, he is. That might be a later chapter. I haven't decided yet.


	18. R is for Recognition

_-n._   
_the process by which home truths smack one in the face_

 

 

“ _What's the matter, Ri?”_

“ _It's never going to happen, is it?_

“ _What isn't?”_

“ _Magic. I'll never be like you, like Beth.”_

#

Lothering. It wasn't until Lothering that she embraced not being born a mage.

She sidesteps a spear, fades to stealth, and scans the ledges for the Saarebas. She's injured him just enough to cause a flash, which means the next time he appears, he'll set off a detonation spell. Which takes time. Time enough for her to deal the killing blow.

A smile she knows is edged and cold: fantastic guys, these predictable Qunari.

#

“ _Why would you want that?”_

“ _Stupid question.”_

“ _Well,_ I _am glad it hasn't happened. Magic is why we've been running.”_

“ _No. We run because the world is dumb.”_

#

Between the Arishok's carnage and her fury, Viscount's Keep is an abattoir, but that's not the most unsettling thing. That would be the admission she's just as terrified as she is exhilarated by a world teetering on chaos' brink.

#

“ _That may be, but they are right to fear.”_

“ _I'm not afraid.”_

“ _Only a fool won't fear magic, and you are not a fool. You are my smart, resourceful girl, and I quake to think about what might've happened to Bethany yesterday without your quick thinking.”_

#

There is no question of giving up Isabela. The need to protect her own is as intrinsic to her as breathing. Just as strong is her need to win. This, here, with the Kirkwall gentry half in pieces and the city burning down all around them, is not an opportunity to waste.

Knife sharp glance and a knife sharp smile. “Let's dance,” she tells the Arishok.

#

“ _Big deal. That farmer was ready to believe I was Andraste after I pulled that coin out of his ear.”_

“ _No, you listen. You covered for your sister, and you defused the situation. Instead of packing up and running again, we were asked to stay for supper.”_

“ _We've supped with farmers before.”_

“ _Not after they were ready to lynch us.”_

#

She strains out shallow breaths through the dizzying agony of broken ribs and blood loss. It was stupid, getting that close to the Arishok. It was also a necessary gamble. Acceptable collateral, that rib or three. Without her blood on Keep's polished floor, he'd never let enough of his guard down. Good, ol' predictable Qunari.

Teeth gritted behind a cold smile, she moves in position for the _coup de_ _grâce._

#

“ _So we're staying, then?”_

“ _Not unless you think we should.”_

“ _Bullshit you're leaving it up to me!”_

“ _I wish I had a better excuse, but the truth is, I've been so focused on protecting you from what I am, I never realized just how capable you are of watching out for all of us in turn. Please, Ri— Marian, tell me your thoughts on staying here.”_

_#_

“You're alive.” The sharp scent of the elfroot tincture he uses to wash wounds mingles with the dusty musk of feathers, underneath which hovers a thrumming, metallic tang. It is, she realizes, the scent that greets her every morning. “Thank you, Marian” he whispers, and pulls her close.  His hands on her back are already warm with healing energy. “Thank you for surviving that.”

She gifts herself a moment of closed eyes and bodies pressed close, but just one. There's still one final, necessary gamble.

_#_

“ _I— I guess it's on the North Road, but small enough even if it does have a chantry, and there's plenty of distance between it and any place with a more significant templar presence, so, I don't know—”_

“ _Yes, you do.”_

“ _Well, if anything does happen, it should be easy to disappear. The farmholds are scattered, not much communication. Arl Bryland's estate is at a good distance as well, which makes this a better choice than Redcliffe.”_

“ _Agreed. Anything else?”_

“ _No one is likely to suspect Beth again after last night, so we're good there. And some of those people feel bad for having overreacted.  They'll be more inclined to help us get settled. Yeah, Lothering is a good option.”_

“ _All right. Then we'll stay.”_

#

Safe in the cocoon of his embrace, she trains cutting glance and cutting smile on Meredith, who has just taken in the dead Arishok, the harrowed nobles, the departing Qunari.

She savors the formality of nodding to the Knight Commander. One duel won, another getting started.

This is the most satisfying gauntlet she has ever thrown because she can forget its purpose as soon as it happens. “I love you,” she says against his hot mouth. Her fingers wind into his hair of their own accord, and for the span of this one kiss, she forgets the world contains anything more complicated, more perilous, than their heartbeats.


End file.
